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The seven principles of a successful restructureShopAbility has teamed up with the Bevington Group, Australia’s most experienced process and productivity improvement specialists.

oupling the experience of ShopAbility’s senior strategy team, all of whom

have decades of CEO and Board level experience in retail and FMCG companies, with the Bevington Group’s experience in improving business operational processes, we can deliver a unique suite of services that centre on real organisational insight using XeP3.

The organisational insight approach using XeP3 consolidates lessons from more than 400 assignments in some of Australia’s largest and best-recognised companies, and ShopAbility is exclusively licensing Bevington Group-patented technology and expertise for use in the retail and FMCG sector.

Here in our second of a series of six insightful and interesting articles, Roger Perry the CEO of the Bevington Group discusses the fundamental principles behind restructuring your business in a changing and improving trading environment.

Even as the economic outlook appears to brighten, the fact remains that many organisations can no longer operate as they have been. A key feature of this changing landscape is the need for organisations to restructure.

As process and structure specialists, Bevington Group has observed the good, the bad and the ugly of restructures. Based on our experiences, we have devised seven broad restructuring principles to help make any restructure a successful one. These principles are:

1. Align structure to strategy

All restructures must align to strategy. This may seem self-evident, yet a significant number of organisations fail to do so. For example, if local conditions are a predominant factor then stress local sales and marketing functions rather than a centralised

behemoth, which then tries to matrix with local elements.

2. Reduce complexitySimply put, complexity

costs. Whether it is a complex organisational structure, a complex product offering, or complex transactional processes, the added cost of complexity can be a drag on performance.

To mitigate complexity, there are three considerations that help with organisational design:1. Design structure for strategy before you design for specific personnel. Organisational redesigns that are a compromise between strategic intent and line management preferences inevitably add complexity. So, while politics

are unavoidable, at least start with a clean and clear design that matches to strategy.2. Avoid making leadership roles too complex (see principle #5)3. Minimise the use of matrices. They introduce measurement overhead and a lack of clear direction to staff.

3. Focus on core activityRemove noise (inefficiency in

processes) and enhance core before restructuring roles. This means that you will need to know what people are doing today by obtaining a detailed understanding of tasks by role.

This ensures that no value-added activities are thrown out when removing a role. Similarly,

Peter HuskinsJoint Director of ShopAbility

A career retailer who is widely known and respected in the Australian FMCG industry with extensive experience in departmet stores, DDS, liquor and supermarkets. Peter has been working with suppliers and retailers developing business, category, customer and channel strategy and competitive points of difference for almost 10 years.

Peter Huskins M: +61 412 574 793 E: peter@shop-ability.com.au

The Shopportunity offer extends across insight development, strategy, implementation, capability and training.Shopportunity offers training courses for marketers, including shopper insights training and a shopper marketing fundamentals course. Two fully hosted retail study tours to the US are also being offered for May 2008. For more information, visit www. sh-opportunity.com.au.

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“Flexibility applies not only to staff members, but to staff capability.”

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June 20, 2011 Retail World 31

duplication and redundant activity can be removed at the time of the restructure.

4. Create feasible rolesDon’t overload roles – restructures

generally leave an organisation with fewer people to do the same amount of work. When restructuring to reduce headcount, make sure you understand the current workload of employees.

This will help to ensure you design roles that are neither too heavily laden nor, indeed, too light. Furthermore, role design must take into account realistic groupings of skills. Packing a role with too many distinct skill sets reduces the pool of durable candidates.

5. Balance ‘own work’ and supervisory load of managers

The case of leadership or ‘management loading’ can be particularly troublesome in restructures. Often, the inability of managers to focus on leadership tasks due to increased output requirements can create significant problems for an organisation.

For example, time spent mentoring and coaching staff drops off: staff become disengaged, more issues arise due to staff errors and managers end up spending more time resolving them. To ensure management are appropriately loaded, it’s critical to balance three elements:

1. The number of staff directly managed or supervised2. Staff ability to perform work without supervision3. The amount of ‘own work’ managers have to do on top of their leadership activity.

6. Implement with clarityOften there is confusion in the

first weeks and months after an initial restructure. After all, who is supposed to be responsible for what? The answer is to clarify roles and responsibilities from the beginning, identify all functions (activities, tasks, and decisions) that have to be accomplished for effective operation, clarify who should be involved and be specific about accountability.

7. Maintain flexibilityFinally, it is important not to cut

your resources too fine. If the organisational change is material, you will need resource flexibility in the first few months, so even as you strive to operate more efficiently, be sure to give yourself some wriggle room in your staffing.

Flexibility applies not only to staff members, but to staff capability. Leave yourself and your leadership team some room to respond to capability gaps in the new structure.

Common ways to do this include a staged transition so there are fewer capability gaps to manage at a point in time, and a temporary use of contract resources until in-house staff become familiar with their roles.

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The Bevington Group is a productivity improvement service provider. The Group was established in 1993, and has refined its methods in more than 400 assignments. Bevington’s core services are: Process Improvement and Restructuring; Continuous Improvement; and Change Management.

Roger PerryManaging Director